Articles Posted in Burn Severity

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Two stories from Missouri in the past two weeks demonstrate just how much people still have to learn about safety on the job site. Carelessness almost resulted in people getting killed in these incidents.

First, in St. Louis, a construction worker was critically injured while working at a building that’s undergoing renovation–due to his own carelessness. A captain with the St. Louis Fire Department said that shortly after 9 a.m. on a Friday, a worker apparently used a blow torch to try and open a barrel marked “flammable”. Early reports were that the man suffered burns on more than 90 percent of his body. Such severe injures make it unlikely that the man will survive.

And in Olympian Village, Missouri, a few days later, a series of propane explosions rocked a busy part of town and terrified residents, though it appears that nobody was seriously inured–which is a miracle, given the size of the explosions. “There was a huge fireball. My guess is that it went about 300 feet into the air,” said one witness. “We heard the rumble from the first explosion, and then we felt the ground shake.”

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An August 15 article in the Rapid City Journal in South Dakota told the story of firefighter Austin Whitney, who is in the long and painful process of recovering from severe burns across thirteen percent of his body. He received those second degree burns and third degree burns after the Coal Canyon wildfire trapped the 22-year-old and four fellow firefighters.

What is helping Austin to make the best recovery he can is this: the power of his mind. “His spirits are just out of this world. He is in such a good mindset,” said Robert Whitney, Austin’s father, from outside the hospital room just two days after Austin was burned. “He told me that this incident isn’t going to stop him from being a firefighter.”

Austin Whitney followed in the firefighting footsteps of his father, grandfather, and aunts and uncles. This summer was his first season with the South Dakota Wildland Fire Suppression Division, a state firefighting agency. But Austin started fighting fires when he turned 18, joining the Pringle Volunteer Fire Department–the same department as his father and grandfather. He joined the Cascade Volunteer Fire Department the following year, and is now a co-captain. “It overjoyed me to no end,” said Austin’s father. “It excited me that he would take an interest like this.”

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In Fort Peck, Montana in late October, a fire destroyed a historic landmark restaurant in eastern Montana and the owner was hospitalized after suffering smoke inhalation.

Fort Peck’s Gateway Inn Bar and Supper Club, built in 1933, caught fire at about 11:30 a.m. on a Saturday, just as the lunch crowd was coming in. An assistant fire chief said that several customers were in the building at the time, but were able to escape.

A local sheriff also said that the restaurant owner made a near-fatal mistake by running back into the building to get some keys–that’s when he suffered smoke inhalation. Although he was listed in good condition just one day after the fire, the owner’s actions were very risky.

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It seems that winter has come early to the Northeast, and surely there are many people in that region who have already started using firewood and other sources of fuel to heat their homes.

However, it is very important to think and take precautions before using a fireplace or other heating unit, because it is very easy to have an accident that causes a small fire to grow out of control, and possibly cause severe burns or swift, deadly smoke inhalation because the fire is in an enclosed space–a den or some other room.

Here is just one recent example of a person being careless and causing a life-threatening situation: In mid-September in Brooklyn Park, Maryland, fire investigators determined that a man who was burned a few days before in the basement of his Brooklyn Park home had poured gasoline on wet wood inside his fireplace.

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In our last post on Wednesday, October 26, we talked about the many services offered at the new Grossman Burn Center in Phoenix, Arizona. But once a burn victim is released from a burn center like Grossman, there are still many challenges to deal with for the rest of their lives. But burn survivors can gain the confidence to move forward in their lives with the help of burn camps. In fact, every state in the U.S. has a burn camp.

Here is one example: In August 2011 a 10-year-old named Elizabeth Watson attended a burn camp in Utah, and came home feeling energized and able to better handle the complications in her life. When Elizabeth was younger, she hated the burn scars that wrapped around her legs, arms, feet and part of her head, thinking that they were so ugly. But over time, Elizabeth learned that the burn scars suffered from a propane accident when she was just 5 months old do not define who she is or how she looks. They are simply, as she says, “a part of who I am.”

Elizabeth attended the annual University Health Care Burn Camp at Camp Tracy in Mill Creek Canyon in Utah, along with 40 other young burn victims. They rode horses, went swimming, made music, and created arts and crafts over four days. All of this helped them build confidence that they can do whatever they want, and that their burn injury and scars won’t hold them back..

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In October 2011, Grossman Burn Centers announced the official opening of its new burn center in Phoenix, Arizona, at St. Luke’s Medical Center. The eight-bed unit is the fifth Grossman Burn Center, and the second outside the state of California.

GBC Medical Director Dr. Peter H. Grossman commented that “It is a privilege to partner with St. Luke’s Medical Center to bring additional state-of-the-art burn care services to Arizona. Our facility will complement Phoenix’s existing burn center by making more beds available to Arizona’s growing population, and by providing patients and referring physicians with more options for their burn treatment regimen. This is a very positive development for the Grossman Burn Centers, for St. Luke’s, and for Arizona.”

The Grossman Burn Center at St. Luke’s Medical Center provides a comprehensive suite of burn care services, from acute and reconstructive burn care, to rehabilitation and post-treatment emotional and psychological support. The center is under the direction of GBC Medical Director, Dr. Peter H. Grossman. It is managed on a day-to-day basis by Dr. Robert Bonillas and Dr. Anthony Admire, and staffed by physicians on the medical staff at St. Luke’s Medical Center trained in restorative burn care.

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On October 6, 2011, the Fire Smoke Coalition launched the first Smoke Inhalation Treatment Database for use by EMTs, first responders and medical professionals throughout the world.

In the United States, residential fires are the third leading cause of fatal injury and the fifth most common cause of unintentional injury death, yet the majority of fire-related fatalities are NOT caused by severe burns–they are cause by smoke inhalation.

Despite the amount of fires in the U.S. decreasing each year, the amount of civilians dying in fires is actually increasing. For example, in 2009, 1,348,500 fires were attended by public fire departments, a decrease of 7.1 percent from the year before; however, 3,010 civilian fire deaths occurred, which is an increase of 9.3 percent.

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A few weeks ago in Kinston, NC, a utility worker was injured badly after 7,200 volts of electricity traveled through his body when he came in contact with an underground power wire. The worker, whose name was not released at press time, was working to fix a power outage when the incident happened. He was taken to the burn unit at UNC Hospital in Chapel Hill because he suffered second degree and third degree burns. One city official said the worker has second degree burns to his face and chest, and third degree burns to his arms and legs. The employee is a lineman who’s been with the city for 25 years. He was working on an underground primary line in a ditch when he was shocked.

That same week in Lake Katrine, NY, a faulty propane gas line caused a home fire that severely burned an elderly couple. The fire left the unidentified woman hospitalized in critical condition at Jacobi Medical Center in New York City, with burns over 90 percent of her body. The man was taken to Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla with burns on about 40 percent of his body. Neighbors trying to help the couple also suffered burns that required medical treatment.

Officials investigating the fire say it is likely that there was a leak in the line between an outdoor propane tank and the stove inside the home, which caused an explosion.

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In Las Vegas in early October, a casino employee was lucky to have survived after suffering smoke inhalation after a fire started inside his restaurant’s grease duct.

Firefighters quickly doused the fire a little before 9 a.m. on a Sunday at the Wynn Las Vegas Resort, and damage was confined to a small mechanical room. And the local fire chief credited the design of the duct system for containing the fire. The Wynn resort is about 10 years old, so it has a very modern design that helps with fire prevention so that a small fire cannot spread easily and become a large fire that threatens any more lives.

On the other hand, many older restaurants around the country are not designed in the same way. As a result, they have a much higher chance of being engulfed in a rapidly-spreading fire if their grease ducts and air ducts are not cleaned regularly. Restaurant managers have an obligation to make sure this cleaning happens enough so that there is only a small chance of a grease fire growing out of control.

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In late September, a 13-month-old girl received severe burns from an accident at a Starbucks Coffee shop in Stuart, FL.

According to the local sheriff’s office, witnesses saw the mother of Lourdes Marsh place the infant in a clip-on tabletop chair that had been manually attached to the table. The chair has no legs that touch the ground, and such a chair is meant for children who are about Lourdes’ age. But for some reason, the weight of the child placed into the chair caused the table to fall over, sending a large cup of very hot coffee and another large cup of hot tea onto Lourdes.

Lourdes received second-degree burns to her face and upper torso. Witnesses said that skin was steaming, red, and coming off her body. A fire/rescue spokesman said the burns covered 20 percent of her body. For a child that small, 20 percent is a dangerously large portion of the body. What’s more, blistering of the skin from burns is a dangerous situation–not only does it require immediate professional medical care, but it makes it possible that the child will have permanent scars. While the child was being taken by helicopter to Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami as a precaution, she was alert, which was a positive sign. And after a few days, Lourdes was recovering at home, although the extent of any permanent scarring will not be know for some time.

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